Antock vs Minecraft Shock and Horror

I experienced lag in Minecraft, for creating a farm with hundreds of chickens and cows. I thought, "Why? . . . Isn't 8 cores sufficient for this? . . . . It's almost like this is only using one or two threads."

I was shocked to find out that Minecraft is only a single threaded game.

In the past, I have used the launcher to allow me to allocate more RAM to the game, but I quickly discovered that allocating more threads to the game is a bit more technical. Even still, it might only be possible with the server version, and that technique might max out at only two threads!

Yet Minecraft is exactly the type of game that you would hope would enable CPU intensive AI. First, the game landscape is HUGE. Secondly, there are many units you can produce, and in-game processes that you can create. You would hope that these could be synthesized into a larger picture of purpose and drive for larger forms of game-play.

But, no. There are actually only one or two reasons to have such an enormous landscape. Most of the time, those reasons do not suffice in the face of a decision between vastly expanding out into the landscape, and just creating a new world. (I find that it is generally better to simply create a new world that includes all the updates and gives me a fresh start.)


(As another point of interest, Minetest is also a single threaded game.)

Antock Concept Game

This concept is a game designed with the full intention to have wider possibilities. For instance, there should be a wider possible set of simultaneous operations that the user has running at any given time.

I am unsure whether or not this would either translate into limited, select areas, or any and every area that was formerly explored by the player. That is a matter of a much deeper understanding of processor resources and software demands.

One thing is sure - that the existing method is too limiting. That is that if you start a farm in one area, and then leave to go take care of something else, then that farm stops producing. Time effectively stands still for that farm.

Additionally, the methods and means of automation in Minecraft are not good enough to make an automated farm worth leaving in the first place - perhaps only to prove that loosely you could make an automated farm at all.

Antock would need to ensure that the game had various generalist methods for automating farming, mining, and other operations such that one could actually leave and entrust those operations to delegated ants who were properly trained.